Posted By Alex Belth On May 19, 2014 @ 11:14 am In 1: Featured,Arts and Culture,Beat of the Day,Hip Hop | Comments Disabled

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Here’s the first of 3 singles we’ll be posting this week from my new full-length mix, Another Fine Mess.

My partner Alan (a/k/a illchemist) and I spent five months crafting the project, lacing spoken word, comedy bits and movie dialogue over Hip Hop beats. It was natural to think of Phillip Seymour Hoffman when digging for choice movie dialogue. Even when he was alive, Hoffman was a guy worth searching on You Tube just to enjoy his robust, sometimes hammy acting. I thought there might be a good bit from his turn as Lester Bangs in Almost Famous. This scene with him on the phone shows Hoffman’s sweetness and vulnerability. The intimate, late night quality of his voice complemented the track nicely. (The beat, “Haagan-Daz” is from The Boulevard Connection’s EP and has long been a favorite.)

At the start of the track we used Del Close’s “The Do-It-Yourself Psychoanalysis Kit” which we ripped off from Prince Paul.

We figured this was as good a time as any to slide in some Jeff Bridges as the Dude from The Big Lebowski. I worked as an assistant film editor on that movie and one of Ethan’s favorite lines while they were editing was the Dude moaning, “Awww, man.” (we also used to say, “Yeah, I gotta rash, man” all the time, too). So that’s why I used it here. And we finish the track with Robert DeNiro, Charles Grodin and Joe Pantoliano from Midnight Run with Albert Brooks saying “Hello?”–a bit taken from Albert’s record, A Star is Bought.

Who better to round it out than Chico and Groucho Marx from their second movie, Animal Crackers (1930). This is part of a longer sequence where Chico annoys the hell out of Groucho by playing “I’m Daffy Over You.” It’s one of the great smart ass musical comedy bits of them all. Always wanted to use it for a mix. Joining them is Catherine Scorcese from The King of Comedy. The final bit comes from The Seven-Year Itch.